1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an operation apparatus controller and a surgery system, and particularly relates to an operation apparatus controller which controls a group of apparatuses including multiple medical apparatuses, and a surgery system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, medical apparatuses have become abundant as medical technology develops, and the functionality thereof is also being further enhanced. There are various medical apparatuses such as electrosurgical knife devices, ultrasound suctioning apparatuses, laser scalpels, and so forth. These medical apparatuses are used singularly in some cases, but in other cases are used as a complex medical system.
Within such medical systems, for example, an endoscope and an endoscope system having various medical apparatuses other than the endoscope are proposed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-76786 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-70748.
With conventional endoscope systems, all of the medical apparatuses have the same communication interface or communication units according to the same communication protocol. Thus, with an endoscope system, the various medical apparatuses are centrally controlled by a system controller, which is an operation apparatus controller, via the communication unit.
Also, the various medical apparatuses normally can store ID data and so forth of a patient, and provide an ID input section for the purpose of inputting the ID data. A surgeon uses the ID input section to perform input operations of the patient ID data, for example at the time of surgery.
Generally, patient ID data and so forth are input in various places by various apparatuses such as personal computers which are located within a hospital. In such a case, in addition to the patient ID data, detailed patient data such as patient name or birth date may also be input, depending on the device.
Such patient ID data is necessary for the surgeon to input using the ID input section of a specific medical apparatus at the time of surgery, as mentioned above, and by the input operation of this ID data, confirmation can be performed regarding as to whether the surgery patient is actually the patient scheduled for surgery or not. Also, patient ID data needs to be input by various apparatuses during examinations or at the time of creating a medical chart.
Also, display apparatuses such as room lights or room cameras, LCDS (Liquid Crystal Display) and PDPs (Plasma Display Panel), and various audio-visual apparatuses (hereafter called AV (Audio Visual)) such as CD (Compact Disc) players, DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) recorders, VTRs (Video Tape Recorder) and reference image storage servers for ultrasound images and the like, are located in an operating room.
There is an extremely large number of types of such AV apparatuses, including multiple apparatuses that can have patient ID data input and stored. Also, these multiple AV apparatuses are controlled by a dedicated AV controller.